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The Swedish label Sandre Metronome is a big player on the local film and DVD market, and amongst other things distribute Warner Brother's catalogue. They also preside over a rather large number of Swedish classic films, and in a new imprint entitled "Sandrew's Filmpärlor" (here is a listing of the titles from a Swedish internet shop) they have begun to release many of these on DVd. Here are some stills from one of these new releases.

I have not picked up any of their previous releases, but last week they made four of Vilgot Sjöman's films available (Syskonbädd 1782, Ni ljuger, En handfull kärlek and Lyckliga Skitar), and I decided to have a look, since especially the first of these titles is supposed to be a very excellent film.

As is probably apparent from the captures, the quality of the transfers is not the highest -- although certainly good enough to enjoy the films. The entries in the series are very reasonable priced (apx. $10), with the opportunity -- for Swedish residents at least -- of picking a fourth title free, upon showing proof of purchase on three of their discs.

What is more, the Sjöman films all feature English subtitles, and from what I can see, at least several of their other releases also have them.

Sandrew Metronome were responsible for the Aki Kaurismäki box sets from a few years back - which included I Hired A Contract Killer, omitted from the Artificial Eye equivalent (presumably for rights reasons, since clips from that film were also cut out of the Jonathan Ross documentary on the third AE volume).

Better still, they released English friendly versions of Sjöberg's Karin Mansdotter, Lindgren's Dear John (Käre John) and Zetterling's Night Games (Nattlek).

rollotomassi wrote:Sjöberg's Karin Mansdotter

This is a truly fascinating film I waited a long time to see. Sjöberg takes his historical subject and presents it in an extraordinarily original way, packaging the narrative up into stylistically disparate sections that work dialectically against one another.

It starts out as a delightful faux-silent film, with Melies-style painted backdrops, intertitles, old stage techniques (e.g. the rolling backdrop) and pantomime (or cardboard cut-out) animals, all lovingly 'distressed' with scratches and jump-cuts. But Sjöberg slyly finds new expressive possibilities within the pastiche, as when the 'bear' (man in a bear suit) that threatens Karin in the woods appears for a split second (as if it were a glitchy splice) in the place of the father that threatens her at home, or when, in an extrordinarily beautiful shot, the shadows of the actual actors become part of an elaborate Lotte Reiniger cut-out for a key encounter in a chapel. (The film's shot by Sven Nykvist, and he really goes to town in this first section.)

The next section is announced as "scenes from Strindberg's play Erik XIV", and continues the tale in the more naturalistic mode of Sjöberg's Miss Julie, though quite streamlined and fast-paced.

The final section changes pace yet again, becoming less literary and more 'filmic' (more Bergman?), with Karin in exile.

It's a fascinating experiment, and it creates an odd emotional trajectory from the madcap invention of the opening to the quiet, sombre mood of the ending, but the decisive shifts in tone are what Sjöberg was exploring, and it reinforces just what an inventive and underestimated director he was.

Now, if only we can get Only a Mother, which reportedly contains one of the all-time-great screen performances, by Eva Dahlbeck.

The only Sandrew disc I have is Zetterling's "Älskande par" (aka Loving Couples), which I found rather disappointing imagewise. I'm aware that Nykvist intentionally over-lighted some scenes, but I don't think that the enormous amount of contrast/brightness-boosting on the disc is like it should look (close to unwatchable in some moments). It certainly looks rather 'uncinematic', and the disc being single-layered also makes the compression rather visible at times. The Beaver caps of the US release, which also includes an early Zetterling short, look far more convincing to me.
The film itself also let me down somewhat. Clearly she was trying to do out-do Bergman by using some of his most famous players and of course his cameraman, and the result looks like a somewhat ill-fitting jumble of all sorts of Bergman films from "Smiles on a Summer Night" through "Strawberries" to "The Silence". Worth seeing, but not much more.

rollotomassi wrote:Better still, they released English friendly versions of Sjöberg's Karin Mansdotter

This forum gets more valuable every day ... I second the motion for more Sjöberg, how about HIMLASPELET and BARRABAS?

zedz wrote: This is a truly fascinating film I waited a long time to see. Sjöberg takes his historical subject and presents it in an extraordinarily original way, packaging the narrative up into stylistically disparate sections that work dialectically against one another.

It starts out as a delightful faux-silent film, with Melies-style painted backdrops, intertitles, old stage techniques (e.g. the rolling backdrop) and pantomime (or cardboard cut-out) animals, all lovingly 'distressed' with scratches and jump-cuts. But Sjöberg slyly finds new expressive possibilities within the pastiche, as when the 'bear' (man in a bear suit) that threatens Karin in the woods appears for a split second (as if it were a glitchy splice) in the place of the father that threatens her at home, or when, in an extrordinarily beautiful shot, the shadows of the actual actors become part of an elaborate Lotte Reiniger cut-out for a key encounter in a chapel. (The film's shot by Sven Nykvist, and he really goes to town in this first section.)

The next section is announced as "scenes from Strindberg's play Erik XIV", and continues the tale in the more naturalistic mode of Sjöberg's Miss Julie, though quite streamlined and fast-paced.

The final section changes pace yet again, becoming less literary and more 'filmic' (more Bergman?), with Karin in exile.

It's a fascinating experiment, and it creates an odd emotional trajectory from the madcap invention of the opening to the quiet, sombre mood of the ending, but the decisive shifts in tone are what Sjöberg was exploring, and it reinforces just what an inventive and underestimated director he was.

It might have been born out of necessity because Sjöberg didn't have the rights and started the film moving away from stringberg, then the rights were cleared and he could move back to the text for the finish.

rollotomassi wrote:Better still, they released English friendly versions of Sjöberg's Karin Mansdotter, Lindgren's Dear John (Käre John) and Zetterling's Night Games (Nattlek).

I ordered Käre John and Nattlek recently, and the image quality is acceptable but not great. Also picked up Lindgren's Änglar, finns dom?, which is in color, and that transfer is more problematic, because the print sourced is very faded.

But, Nattlek was high on my want list ever since seeing the two Mai Zetterling films (which bookend Nattlek chronologically) that Project X released in the US, so I'm not complaining.